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U.S. stock futures climb before durable-goods, house-price data

U.S. stock futures rose Tuesday before reports on durable-goods orders and housing prices.

BLOOMBERG FILE PHOTO/JIN LEE

Posted:
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:59 am

By Sarah JonesBloomberg News

LONDON - U.S. stock futures rose, signaling the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will rebound from yesterday’s decline, before reports that may show an increase in durable- goods orders and a jump in house prices.

Intel Corp. climbed after the company was said to have made progress in talks with broadcasters to set up an online pay- television service. Chevron Corp. advanced as West Texas Intermediate crude traded near a five-week high.

S&P 500 futures expiring in June added 0.2 percent to 1,549.5 at 7:32 a.m. in New York after the equity benchmark fell 0.3 percent yesterday. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 23 points, or 0.2 percent, to 14,409 today.

“The durable goods headline figure should be good due to a rebound in Boeing orders for the month,” said Ioan Smith, a strategist at Knight Capital Europe Ltd. in London. “Whilst U.S. data has generally been better than that in the euro zone, the worst of the effects of the sequester have yet to be felt making this the period of greatest risk to the momentum of the U.S. economy.”

Equities initially rallied yesterday, sending the S&P 500 to within a point of its record set in October 2007, as Cyprus obtained a 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) bailout from the euro area after agreeing to shrink its banking system. Stocks then dropped amid concern that the rescue package will become a template for future rescues of debt-stricken European countries.

A report at 8:30 a.m. in Washington will show that orders for durable goods climbed 3.9 percent in February, their biggest gain in five months, helped by a rebound in demand for commercial aircraft, according to the median economist forecast in a Bloomberg survey. They dropped 4.9 percent in January.

House prices

Separate releases may show the residential-housing market continued to improve. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property prices in 20 cities, due at 9 a.m. New York time, rose 7.9 percent in the 12 months ended January, its biggest gain since June 2006, according to the Bloomberg survey median.

At 10 a.m., the Commerce Department will report that new houses sold at a 420,000 annual pace last month after a 437,000 rate in January, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That would be the best back-to-back performance in four years.

Intel gained 0.6 percent to $21.27 in German trading after people with knowledge of the matter said the world’s largest chipmaker has made progress in talks with Time Warner Inc., NBC Universal and Viacom Inc. to obtain TV shows and films for the online multichannel pay-TV service.

Chevron Corp. increased 0.3 percent to $120.50 in Germany as WTI for May delivery rose to $95.56 a barrel, up 75 cents, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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